Utilitarianism Essay Essay Example for Free

Utilitarianism Essay EssayUtilitarianism is an ethical theory which snatchs as a guideline on how people should act in genuine situations and was first introduced by a hedonist (pursuer of delight) named Jeremy Bentham who put forward the Principle of Utility which said The greatest felicity for the greatest form. Utilitarianism is a theory which bases on the end purpose (teleological) of achieving pleasure, our decisions should be based on consequences in interest of the principle of utility (consequentialist) and is a theory which judges each situation independently (relativistic). Jeremy Bentham was the first indorser and developer for Utilitarianism and was more or less famous for his version of Act Utilitarianism which focused applying the Principle of utility to each individual act to each unique situation. Bentham believed that happiness was the first thing to determine when making a decision, and our pleasure helped us achieve the nearly happiness. Bentham said that Nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters, put out and pleasure and it is them that leave determine what we ought to do meaning the right moral decision will take place about through the considerations of pleasure and pain.He devised the Hedonic calculus (hedonic meaning pleasure) which was a piece of implement which helped him quantify happiness. The Hedonic calculus holds seven aspects which need to be considered Duration (How long the pleasure will last), Remoteness (How close is the happiness), Purity (How free from pain is the pleasure), Richness (How likely will the pleasure belong to more happiness), Intensity (How surd the pleasure is), Certainty (How sure the act will produce happiness) and accomplishment (Will other people be affected by the pleasure).Its these factors which a person must consider and weigh up in terms of pain and pleasure in order to find the most moral and ethical decision to make, if the calculus totals up in more pain over pleas ure then this defines it as the wrong choice to make. Bentham says that you must choose the act which maximises the amount of pleasure for the most amounts of people to ensure happiness. Bentham believed that all people were entitled to happiness, and so each to count as unrivaled and no-one as more than one.However, there were many obvious faults in this theory for example, eating a drinking chocolate bar is subjective to people who like and dislike chocolate therefore non every transaction has equal pleasure and pain for every person. John Stuart Mill, a fellow colleague of Jeremy Bentham criticised him for developing a Swine theory as it encouraged people to be selfish and recognizes no higher purpose for heart other than the mere pursuit of pleasure. Mill was concerned that one persons unhappiness could be entirely overlooked if the majority were happy.Unlike Bentham, Mill focused on differentiating the quality of pleasure and thus introduced a new theory of utility called Rule Utilitarianism which acted as a general guideline that achieved happiness without discriminating. Mills definition of happiness was tended to the spiritual and culture side rather than just physical. He distinguished between Higher and lower pleasures, higher pleasures were in pleasures in tune with the mind such(prenominal) as reading and poetry and lower pleasures tended to physical needs to do with the body like sexual practice and eating.Mill stated that lower pleasures are more easily accomplishable and thus have to be completed before satisfying the intellectual needs of the mind. He famously wrote It is better to be a human cheery than a pig satisfied, it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied this meant that humans were able to feel much more rewarding emotions far above the magnitude of the feelings of the pig, careless(predicate) of dissatisfaction. Two types of eclipse utilitarianism have been identified in modern times, strong rule and weak rule utilitarian.Each still focuses on the application of a general rule to achieve happiness, but strong rule utilitarianism defines the rule as absolute and must not be broken, an example of this is Do not kill which is created through the principle of utility. Weak rule utilitarianism offers a person the choice to break certain rules in order to achieve the greater good as an exception, for example the rule of Do not kill could be broken if the opportunity to kill Hitler to prevent more pain from occurring. Mill was define by some scholars as a weak Utilitarian.